Risen 2 - Interview @ RPGamer

After the huge sandbox world from Gothic 3, Risen was a return to the more focused, story-driven design seen in Gothic 1 and 2. Risen 2 appears to be much the same way. Would you ever consider making a game as large and open-ended as Gothic 3 again?
BP: We have always tried to learn from the experiences we made with our past games. We could imagine designing a world with a similar size to that of Gothic 3 again, and we almost did so for Risen 2. We believe that we can now tell a more captivating story by gathering the threads at certain points and adding twists. For that reason, we created an open world, but also implemented many more story elements this time.